


Extra Blue Sky

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Tomorrowland (2015)
Genre: F/M, Families of Choice, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5607997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank sometimes wishes she weren't so smart - no, that's not right, he could never hope that for anyone, not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extra Blue Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly just me trying to figure out if I 'shipped Frank/Casey after all.

"Were you ever normal?" Casey asks, her voice quiet and wondering this time, the question soft and sincere.

Frank sometimes wishes she weren't so smart - no, that's not right, he could never hope that for anyone, not anymore - he wishes she didn't _see_ so much all the time. Too often she finds the very thing he wants to shelter and ten seconds later, he's telling her everything. 

"I tried," he says now. He stares up at the sky. "You could forge things like degrees easier then. Plus, you know, _genius_. So I got some odd jobs here and there, designing security systems and door locks and that sort of thing, and I -" he stops to take a deep breath, and Casey's hand slides over the grass to touch his, then she grips his fingers so tight it's almost painful. "Normal human relationships? Well, I tried," he says again.

The years he spent trying to fit in flash behind his eyes, a reel of near embarrassments and close calls and carefully tending things he would have rather let go to seed. Frank looks younger than the date on his birth certificate would suggest; years spent refusing to grow up, in a place that allowed him to refuse. Casey's grip lessens slightly and her thumb sweeps over the back of his hand. "Tell me?" she asks, because there are still some things he's never said. 

Frank's hesitant, and Casey looks over at him like she knows what he's thinking. "Frank, I'm nineteen. I had a boyfriend last summer."

"I never took you for a child," Frank replies, more crossly than he actually feels, but Casey only laughs at him in that weird laugh of hers and bumps their shoulders together. Frank is suddenly very glad she's there; she's practically the only person here he feels entirely himself around these days. "You have to understand that even though I was in my twenties when David banished me from here, I was hardly an adult."

"Frank," Casey says, like she's always understood that about him, from the second she showed up on his doorstep. 

Frank looks up at the sky of Tomorrowland again, sparkling with stars and satellites. Both he and Casey come out here a lot, after a long day of equations and programming, and tinkering in a lab. The Tomorrowland they'd rebuilt isn't quite the Tomorrowland he remembers, but Frank can at least admit that what he remembers probably isn't the way things were. And what he remembers is too colored by Athena, too painful to think about on more than an occasional basis.

The first thing they'd done was clean up the mess of the destroyed Monitor. Frank pulled all the parts that were salvageable and handed over all the equations to Casey. Then he bulldozed the debris of his blown-up house and sold off the land in Pittsfield, and set up a less drafty, less dust-prone lab here with all his gadgets and inventions. He lined up his family pictures in an apartment he didn't have to booby-trap against robots, but since there's a cot in his lab, he spends most of his time there, until Eddie finds a repair he needs Frank's help with, or Casey appears in the doorway looking thunderous, sighing dramatically at him as she takes his hands away from whatever he's working on and pushes him bodily out into the fresh air, or through a portal to some greasy spoon to glare at him until he eats something. 

"Surely the food at home is more nutritious," Frank mutters, glaring right back at her even as he drags the french fries through ketchup. Then he wonders when he started to think of their new Tomorrowland as _home_. Somewhere along the way.

"Well, yeah, but you forget how to be a normal human being if I don't convince you to share a milkshake once in awhile," she replies, prodding the glass of the strawberry milkshake they're sharing closer to him. "How's the thing?"

The _thing_ is a water condenser, small enough to fit in the palm of a hand; although now that there's hardly anything left of NASA Frank isn't entirely sure of sales. But sales aren't his job anyway, they've got a brilliant woman named Maya for that. "Maybe it needs to be less a condenser and more a converter."

"Why not both?" Casey sticks a spoonful of the milkshake into her mouth. 

"Make it something useful here on Earth, instead of just in space," Frank says slowly, and Casey nods around her spoon. He grabs a napkin from the dispenser and the pen from his pocket, and sketches for a second, thinking. "I could do that without making it much bigger."

Casey rolls her eyes. "Of course you can do that." She points the spoon at him fast enough he can almost hear it _whoosh_ through the air. "Just because we're dreamers doesn't mean we can't be practical," she says in her bossy tone. It's the one that always makes Frank scoff because he wants to laugh, but he knows she's right at the same time. 

She used it when when they decided to live full-time in Tomorrowland, after recruiting a couple architects to help with the rebuild of the ruined habitation towers, and a botanist to retrain the roof gardens that were either mostly dead, or completely overgrown. 

"I don't need an apartment," Frank says, when Casey asks which tower he'd rather live in. "A room off my lab, that's fine. I can install a sonic shower no problem."

Casey stares at him from under the brim of her hat, wide-eyed for a long minute. Then she clears her throat and crosses her arms over her chest. Frank knows he's in for it now.

"First of all, no. You're not camping in your lab. Second, no, because you need someplace for the weekends when I make you watch all the movies you've missed in the last twenty years. Third, _you're not camping in your lab_ , Frank, sonic shower or not. If you do that you'll work twenty hours a day, seven days a week, and no one will ever see you. I'll never see you."

Frank grumbles under his breath, but he really can't argue with her. "Fine."

Casey beams, clearly pleased he's given in so easily. Like he doesn't give in most of the time. That first weekend she brings over _Fool's Gold_. 

"This is not what I thought of when you said you were going to make me watch culturally significant movies, Casey," he says to her.

"I never said any of them would be culturally significant, just that they were movies you'd missed," Casey says airily, shoving another handful of popcorn into her mouth, but the next weekend she pulls up _The Silence of the Lambs_ , and Frank finds himself engrossed.

"Okay, that one was much better," he says when it's over. 

Casey looks smug as she sets the projector back to the main menu - actual televisions are just a big waste of space; Frank's got a projector smaller than a toaster and a big blank wall to use as a screen. "One more?" she asks.

"Sure, why not?" Maybe then she'll let him go back to the lab.

This time she picks _Casino Royale_. "I've seen this one," Frank says.

"Do you not want to watch it?"

"No, I like it."

She beams at him. "Good." Then she wiggles closer on the reasonably comfortable sofa she made him put in the living room of the apartment and leans her head on his shoulder. Frank doesn't move, because _Casey_ , and keeps his eyes forward on the movie. 

As Bond sits down at the card table for the first time, Casey hits pause. "Frank."

"Yes?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Even if I say no, you'll ask it anyway," Frank points out, because this is a conversation they've had before. 

She's still leaning against his shoulder, though, and Frank can actually feel her exhale before she says, "I could build you a new Athena. Would you - is that something you want?"

The thought makes him want to flinch, but he keeps himself still on the outside. And Casey must mistake his silence for something else, maybe horror or anger - as if Frank could _ever_ be truly angry with her - because she says quickly, "I haven't done anything; I wanted to ask you first. Her personality matrix is still in the database, and I just thought - thought that maybe you'd be less lonely with someone else to talk to."

"I'm not lonely," is Frank's first protest, and Casey makes a scoffing sound. "I'm not. There are plenty of people here, and you're always coming around to make me do normal human things, as you always put it."

"But -"

"It's okay, Case," he says quietly.

She moves just enough that he can see her sad frown. "Really, it's okay, I mean it," Frank says. He blows out a long breath. "I - I needed to let go, and she did something good with her death, and isn't that one of the most human things someone can do?"

He's had a lot of time to think about it. He knows Athena's matrix is still in the database, because sometimes he thinks about opening the file so he can talk to her. Sometimes he finds himself with his hands hovering over the keyboard, ready to input the commands. But he always stops himself and steps away, because he's finally learned that letting go is important, and that sometimes it's the best thing you can do for yourself.

"If you're sure," Casey whispers, still looking at him. 

"Yep."

"Okay."

"But thanks," he adds. Carefully, he moves the arm she's leaning against so that he can slide it over her shoulders and squeeze. 

"What is this, a _hug_?" she deadpans, and widens her eyes dramatically on purpose. Frank can't help but laugh at that, and leaves his arm where it is as Casey hits play on the movie again.

Eddie basically cornered him one day, showing up at Frank's lab under the pretense of questions about repairing the monorail. "I need to ask you something about Casey," he says once they've discussed the magnets, and Frank's busy with re-thinking a conversion equation and doesn't realize Eddie's nearly glaring at him. 

"She could run this place some day," he says, not looking up from his screen. "She practically runs it now."

"Are you her boyfriend?"

That gets Frank to look up, his hands freezing on the keyboard and his heartbeat tripping a little. Somehow Casey makes things flicker even when she's not here. " _What?_ "

Eddie runs right over both the question and the emphasis, and keeps going. "Don't you think you're a little old for her? As in, a lot old for her?"

"Whoa, Eddie, wait," Frank says, holding up a hand. "Wait. I'm not - I'm not Casey's boyfriend."

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and looks unmoved. Frank sighs, wondering if he should move further than arm's reach away. He hasn't had much experience with angry fathers of women he isn't actually in a relationship with, to say the least. 

"Well," Eddie says, "I sure don't understand it, but you're her something."

Then he turns and marches away, and Frank drops his head into his hands. His life wasn't even this weird when he was living alone watching a countdown clock and a dozen televisions showing atrocities. _You're her something_ , what does that even mean? 

Sadly, the holographic display doesn't have any answers. Equation forgotten, Frank closes out of the monorail schematics with a sigh.

"He asked you _what_?" Casey nearly shrieks over cheese fries. 

Frank glances around the diner. The waitress at the counter is looking at them and not bothering to hide it. "Ssh, there are other people in here, and they're staring at us now."

"Sorry." She's not sorry in the least and Frank knows it. "I just - he really marched in and asked you that, flat out?"

"Well, we talked about the monorail first."

Casey groans and rolls her eyes. "Dads are the worst," she grumbles, stabbing a french fry into the cheese sauce. Then her face reddens. "Sorry, Frank, I didn't mean -"

"It's okay, Case." He smiles to show it's fine, because it is. 

"What else did he say?"

"First he accused me of being too old for you, and then I said I wasn't your boyfriend, and then he said I was your something, whatever that means. Then he left."

"Hmm." Casey nudges the plate towards him, so Frank eats a couple fries. "Well. I'm sorry he ambushed you like that, because wow, not nice at all. What was he going to do, give you some lecture on not breaking my heart? Lame."

She's still red in the face, which Frank will admit he finds kind of endearing. "He's just looking out for you in that dad sort of way," he says. "Now that you're an adult, threatening to beat me up might be all he's got left."

That makes her laugh. "I'll tell him he's not allowed to beat you up, because I still need you to help me run Tomorrowland."

"Still?" he gasps, pretending to be offended. "Are you saying I'm on the verge of going obsolete?"

Casey tilts her head like she's thinking about it, so Frank flicks water at her from his glass. Casey responds in kind, and the waitress behind the counter pointedly clears her throat. Casey slumps sideways, laughing, but Frank straightens up and offers a "sorry" in the waitress' direction. He tips generously when they leave. 

Casey's got the portal generator on her watch - Frank didn't bother bringing his - so they duck around the back of the diner where no one can see. It's dim, the barest of light from the frosted-over window to the diner's kitchen. Sticks and dried leaves crackle beneath their feet. Ahead of him, Casey turns around, and maybe it's the lack of light that makes it hard for Frank to read the expression on her face. 

"What is it?" he asks, frowning. 

Casey makes a small huffing noise and launches herself at him. Her mouth lands on his, warm and a little salty. Frank catches her elbows, confused at first, and Casey breaks the kiss only to do it again. This time he urges her arms around his neck, then slides his around her waist and kisses her back. A raw noise from the back of her throat vibrates through all the places they're touching.

"You sure don't start small," Frank manages to say when the kiss ends. 

"Where's the fun in that?" Casey sounds a little breathless. "Was that okay, can we do that again?" she asks, but doesn't wait for an answer, just gets her mouth on his again. Frank flicks at her teeth with his tongue, feeling her shiver and then press harder against him. Then he kisses the very corner of her mouth, the hinge of her jaw, and down her neck to the collar of her jacket. 

Her hands move upward and flex in his hair. "Casey," he whispers, remembering where they are when he hears a car door slam. "Maybe we should stop making out behind the diner before someone comes back here."

"Oh. Yeah." She steps back, straightening her jacket. Frank smooths his hair back into place as she activates the portal. "Are you going back to your apartment?" she asks as they step through to the promenade. It's quiet this time of night; he can only see a few people and they're a good hundred yards away, at least. Casey touches another button on her wrist and the portal flickers out.

"Um." _That's very coherent, Frank,_ he thinks. His lips feel slightly tender. Casey's looking at him like she's already made up her mind, and like no matter what protests Frank might put forth, they're working on her terms right now. "Whatever you want, Case."

Apparently what Casey wants is to turn on a movie, bright and flickering onto the white wall, then turn right around and ignore it in favor of straddling Frank's lap to kiss him. Her hands are cool on his face at first, but warm quickly. "Can we just do this?" she asks in between kisses. "I've wanted to do this for a long time."

"Sure."

She closes her teeth gently on his lower lip, then sighs into his mouth. Frank moves one of his hands from where it's resting on her hip to stroke over her back. Casey makes that same uninhibited noise. 

Frank rubs his cheek slowly over hers. "Are you _sure_ I should be making out with a nineteen year-old?"

"Shut up, Frank," she replies, huffing. "Also, you're giving me beard burn."

Frank chuckles. Casey nips at his earlobe and slides off his lap. 

The first time she spends the night, it's because she falls asleep on the sofa, up too late going over schematics after a full day of classes - Eddie had insisted she not let her full ride to Florida State go to waste, so Casey - as Casey does - is taking extra classes after testing out of everything she could test out of so that she can be done as fast as possible. Frank wonders sometimes what she's doing, as he eats a meal replacement bar alone in his lab; if she's got friends to eat lunch with out in the Florida sunshine, sitting out on the quad or whatever they call it. 

"I stacked all my classes right in a row, and then I come here," Casey says when he asks her about it, looking at Frank like he's crazy. "As my dad would say, I have acquaintances. My physics professor, though, I think you would like him. He's weird like you are."

"Gee, thanks."

Casey gives him the _you know what I mean_ look and declares she needs Pop-Tarts. "Want to come with?"

"To the grocery store?" Frank asks.

"Yes, Frank, the grocery store." Casey tilts her head. "I bet you haven't spent money on anything since we came here, _and_ I bet you only bought those gross frozen dinners before."

As usual, she's not wrong. "I also ordered Cup Noodles off the internet," Frank says, mostly to watch the half-horrified, half-amused expression travel across her face. Sometimes he really enjoys saying things just to see what will happen in response. "Fine, I'll come with. And did you forget who pays _every time_ when you drag me out for greasy diner food?"

"Cheese fries sound so good right now," she sighs, hitching herself up onto the small empty space left on his workbench and gently sliding a power coupling out of harm's way.

Frank suddenly remembers he hasn't eaten dinner. Or lunch. He's been wrapped up in an engine design since approximately eight in the morning. "I could eat. Hey, wanna hear about my rocketship?"

" _Yes._ Wait, was that innuendo?"

Frank somehow chokes and laughs at the same time, nearly dropping his tablet. "Jesus, Casey," he manages, and she grins brightly even as she blushes. "It wasn't innuendo."

Casey reaches out and grabs the front of his shirt, yanking him close. "I thought you wanted to go get some Pop-Tarts," Frank murmurs, just before she fits their mouths together. 

"Mm-hmm," Casey hums in reply. He manages to get the tablet to a relatively safe space on the table without looking, then slides his hands over her waist. 

They do leave to get Casey's Pop-Tarts eventually, after Nate comes looking for Casey to help him with his math homework. Frank looks at their heads bent together over the worksheet and feels the old sting of loss. The apology he never got to give his parents for running away is always lodged in his throat, waiting, but they've been gone longer than Frank's consciously thought about even needing to give it. 

"You seem a little quiet," Casey says later, as they wander aimlessly around a Brevard County grocery store. It's late, and the store is mostly deserted.

Frank shakes his head, but she raises her eyebrows at him, so he sighs and says, "Seeing the good relationship you have with your family reminds me that I ran away from mine."

Casey doesn't reply in words, but she slides her hand into his and squeezes. 

"You know you're my family too," she says later, as they lie on the grass of the promenade and look up at Tomorrowland's night sky. She's trapped Frank's hand in hers, and Frank can feel her thumb rubbing in small, slow circles. The back of his throat hurts suddenly; when he swallows hard to relieve it, the sound is audible. Casey rolls onto her side to look down at him, the curtain of her hair putting her face in shadow. She whispers, "Frank?"

"Sorry, just trying to figure out how to say the same," he manages to get out, the words barely words at all, hardly audible over the beating of his heart. He reaches up to push back Casey's hair, and in the flash of a winking satellite overhead he can see her smile.


End file.
